In the movies, the bad guy pretty much always gets some comeuppance--but real life doesn't always work that way and this article is proof.
Reddit user Pixiedustpotatoe asked:
Were you bullied at school? Where are your bullies now and what did they make of their lives?
and it's pretty much like a VH1 Where Are They Now? special for all the people in your life who really, really sucked.
If you experience bullying then you sort of hope to see your bullies face some sort of karmic consequences, but based on these responses it may not happen.
When it does though, ooooohhhh when it does...
She Is Not Her Father
He became an auto mechanic, was married and had 2 kids. He died around 35 years old and I ended up teaching his daughter in middle school. She was very smart which was weird since he was not at all. I went out of my way to be sure I was kind to her and to be sure there was no negative feelings towards her. She is not her father and had nothing to do with how he treated me.
- 1toy4me
They Succeed Just Fine
Yes, and well, they all have normal lives as far as I know. They finished school, got normal jobs, and carried on as if nothing had happened.
I've found out that the thing they tell you about bullies not succeeding in life is just a lie. In all honesty, they have had more successful lives than myself, so it has flipped the other way around. Bullying someone doesn't leave a major impact on your life, while getting bullied can easily lead to social and mental problems.
Plot Twist!
Giphy
I was. I became friends with my high school bully as an adult after we connected on Facebook (she had been a Mean Girl, popular, was a model, while I was a weird, bookish art nerd). She confessed in our 30s a few years into the friendship she had feelings for me, it was wild (I never anticipated it, had always thought she was straight.)
She got embarrassed and ghosted after I asked for time to process what she'd told me (I was interested, just blown away.)
I have no idea what she's doing now. I think she's a stay at home mom. I dunno, I hope she's happy. She turned out not to be a bad person, just troubled.
Some Things Never Change
My bully would pull my pants down without fail every day from grade 3 to grade 5. It could be while I was eating lunch, or washing my hands, or walking by - just at any point of the day really. She would even pull my underwear down with my pants occasionally. I would get so embarrassed and cry in the bathrooms.
Fast forward to now, she came up on Facebook as a friend suggestion (stalked a little, she's now married with a baby girl), some of my colleagues being mutual friends. I asked one of my colleagues about how they knew the bully and my colleague said the bully was working here and got fired a month before I started working.
Apparently she was purposely causing dramas between departments. I asked my colleague what she was like and my colleague (who didn't know she was a bully) said she was always very rude, unapproachable and difficult to work with. Sounds like some things never change!
I'm A Better Person
He's got a nice, cushy job, a wife, four kids, and owns his house. And I have PTSD and am currently unemployed in part because of that diagnosis.
But I'm a better person than he is, because I can say without reservation that I've never abused anyone in all the ways he abused me.
I still don't forgive him. I want to but I can't do that yet.
Tenure
Don't know, don't care, I'm a tenured professor now with plenty of time for my hobbies so f*ck them wherever they are.
- nealius
Satisfying
Giphy
One boy at school spent years calling me fat and ugly. A couple of years ago he persistently hit on me in a club to the point that a male friend had to threaten him to leave me alone. Satisfying doesn't cover it.
- dgic
The Sheer Disregard
Bullied, called homophobic slurs because I wanted to stay in and sketch/ draw cartoons and not play sports. Kicked and punched a couple of times too.
Met both of them years after we went to school together. One had gone to jail for a year. Both acted like they never did anything or remember what they did. I think that's the part that hurt the most, just the sheer disregard.
Thanks Karma!
Yes, and things actually turned out quite well for me. I was a really nerdy, very unattractive kid. Kids picked on me a lot. All these years later, I turned out to be quite beautiful and am a lawyer. The bullies? Most dropped out of college. The worst of them used to be a very cute kid but turned into a morbidly obese adult who lives at home. Karma did me good.
Once A Year
One of my bullies was/is a friend of my brothers. My brother moved 1000 miles away from me, but the bully friend still lives in my same area. My brother comes to visit 2x a year, and during the summer visit, I throw a large party, to which my brother always invites this person.
I was teased and taunted unmercifully by this guy all through high school about my weight, looks, lack of boyfriend (or type of bf when I had one) you name it. My husband is perturbed that my brother is even friends with this guy still. But he and us only see him once a year for about three hours. We will survive, I am 48 now, I'm an adult, I'm over it an not afraid of him.
I am, however, pleased (in a petty revenge kind of way) to report he has had not one but TWO failed marriages, lost a nice job his sister got him at her company because he came to work drunk, got kicked out of college for who knows what (alleged illegal activity, from what my brother says), and I'm sure his life sucks in other ways.
Feel No Pity
I was bullied to the point where I considered suicide, luckily a few things happened in my life which helped me to change my mind and I'm doing really well right now (I'm currently working toward my dream career!) I still have anxiety and depression but it's not a bad as it used to be.
I find it funny how all the people who bullied me and almost destroyed me, are now destroying their own lives with drugs and alcohol. I don't feel any pity for them, after over 10 years of torment, both mental and physical (of course the school system did absolutely nothing to help me). They got what they deserved.
Motivation
Two mean girls at my high school. One got an abortion and graduated a low tier law school, the other went to some city college for an arts degree and is now doing probably some minimum wage job.
I'd say just keep working hard, and when you get unmotivated think about how good it'd feel to laugh at those people on your way up >:)
Sure as hell got me going.
Relevant Backstory
There were two main bullies, the best I can tell one turned into a typical working class chav and he spends the majority of his time doing petty criminal stuff - his brother, also a bully of mine, is serving hard time for an armed robbery. I expected nothing less. The other, I've no idea what happened to him but mutual acquaintances tell me he is now a drug addict and homeless so I'm in the odd position of feeling sorry for someone who caused me a lot of misery.
On a more positive note, another kid who bullied me in High School ended up becoming one of my friends many years later. He was abused at home as a kid and that was the reason he acted out in school. Now he's happily married and living a great life.
- zerbey
A Lesson Learned
I was bullied and I did some bullying of my own, I am not proud of that, but it did happen and I have since reached out to them to tell them I am sorry and that I had no right to do what I did and asked them to forgive me. They all (thankfully) forgave me and thanked me for contacting them.
I know that 'bullying' by today's standards is vastly more harmful than what I did in the late 80's/early 90's, with everyone seeing it online with cyber-bullying, but I still feel pretty bad about what I said to some people.
Nightmares
Giphy
I had a horrible bully in middle school. I was an athletic (judo) girl, not even chubby, but she shamed me into anorexia and eventual hospitalization. Fast forward 5 years, she jumped from an 8 story building and died two days later. Had extremely mixed feelings about it, even went to her funeral. I'd been wishing death on that girl for half a decade. Still have nightmares of me pushing her.
- bellezyk
Better
Ayy, got bullied by someone when younger. Turns out he stole my first girlfriend. We were together for 3 and a half years. It's been like 6 years now and they are still together.
So briefly, my bully stole my girlfriend and turns out to be a better boyfriend than me. Fml.
- morybon
Redditor OpulentOwl wanted to know about the tv shows our lives would brighter with, they asked:
"What's a great TV show that nobody talks about?"
I love The Closer & Major Crimes.
So well done.
Take a look.
Brilliance!
"Most of Bryan Fuller's stuff (other than Hannibal, which did get some traction). Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies were both top tier." ~ nostalgicBadger
GiphyJK Forever!
"Counterpart. Great cast and acting, cool story, two solid seasons." ~ elevenghosts
"I want to go back and rewatch it - the other side had a global pandemic that killed millions. As a result they don't gather in groups in public, they wear masks, they have UV hand sanitizers everywhere. And all this predates covid by a few years. Also JK Simmons is terrific as always." ~ canuck47
CBC History!
"The Terror. (season 1 is AMAZING)." ~ MagdaCadabra
"It was really interesting watching this series because it is part of Canadian history. I watched an old CBC documentary about it and some of the oral histories from the Inuit suggest there was a group of men still walking like 8 years on from when they first abandoned ship." ~ TheMightyWoofer
Actors Galore
"I really liked The Knick." ~ ricomt21
"The Knick had such an incredible cast. One of those shows for which I actively searched out the actors once it wrapped. I’ll watch André Holland and Jeremy Bobb in anything! Chris Sullivan was sooo good with Cara Seymour. (Unfortunately, I can’t watch him in This Is Us… not my cup of tea.)" ~ CCMacReddit
Precious Metal
"The Detectorists. Extremely dry and very British, but a really heartfelt and lovely comedy about some metal detectorists in Essex." ~ BwingoLord1
“Any of you chaps see a trampoline?“
"https://youtu.be/2-iyz1UB1og That’s the clip that I usually use when showing people the show. Either grabs them immediately or meh." ~ thermbug
GiphyI loved Dead Like Me.
That ended way too soon.
The Knick? Meh...
Huzzah!
"The Great. It's...great! Hilarious and charming and occasionally a true story." ~ Dusk9K
GiphyMiss you Ted...
"Better off Ted was unceremoniously killed before its time, with ABC citing a lack of viewers. It pops up from time to time on reddit, but being from 2009, it's largely out of the cultural sphere these days. Which is unfortunate, because Portia de Rossi in particular is incredible in it."
"I was looking for a good clip to show the best of this show for people who haven't watched it before, and the Jabberwocky presentation, linked below by a brilliant person, is probably the single greatest example of the show I can think of. As a few have been asking, if you're wanting to give it a shot, it's on Hulu right now." ~ lifelongfreshman
On a Hill
"Mission Hill. Just too ahead of it's time." ~ MotherLoveBone27
"It could totally come back in today's culture. Well, almost; it's literally a major plot point that Andy, after losing his waterbed selling job and mucking about, nets a job in marketing thanks to his friend Jim, being seen by Jim's boss as 'youth of today' and thus valuable for marketing input."
"That spin doesn't really work in current times, so in the event the series does come back, it'd be interesting what the writers do." ~ digitaldrummer1
Sci-Fi Best
"Farscape is one of my absolute favorite shows of all time and it pops up occasionally on threads like this but I never hear it talked about in the wild." ~ sharrrper
"Farscape is probably my favorite sci fi show for so many reasons. Great writing, interesting world, and they didn't phone in the aliens with facial prosthetics and some kind of bullcrap hand waving about 'ancient ones seeding the galaxy.'" ~ emu314159
90s Genius
"Sliders is a show that was supposedly popular in the mid 90s yet is sadly forgotten. The first 3 seasons were awesome." ~ offspringphreak
Giphy"Sliders was awesome! I'll never forget the episode where he finally gets back to his timeline and left because the gate didn't squeak. Then a repairman comes out and says, 'I fixed that squeaky gate for you' to his mom. Thanks for the flashback!!" ~ PhatBallllzAtHotmail
Oh Sliders, talk about memory lane. Let's go get out binge lists ready!
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Reddit user CaptainLiv47 asked:
"What was the weirdest job you have ever had?"
They say it's never too late to make a change, so maybe there's still time for me to boop some sharks when I "grow up."
Clearly there are TONS of weird work options, though.
Exactly 12
"I used to work for the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, Weights and Measures Division— I was in charge of making sure all rulers were exactly 12 inches long."
- 0Ring-0
"I work in Quality in manufacturing. This is way more important than people think."
- WET318
"I picture you having this ruler made of pure platinum that is EXACT, then going to like school supply manufactures and just snapping random rulers off the production line to compare them."
"I also picture you with a big mustache and tiny glasses."
- dbatchison
GiphyShark Booper
"Underwater videographer for a National Geographic documentary shoot on Tiger Sharks."
"There were always two of us underwater for the filming. One with the camera and the other one just behind and above with a long aluminum pole with a crossbar on the end. We called it 'the Defender Pole'."
"If any shark came too close (these were some very large sharks) to the cameraman, you'd give it a gentle boop on the snoot with 'The Defender Pole'."
"The project was headed by a guy named Greg Marshall, who invented a device called "Crittercam" to attach to wildlife such as sharks, turtles, lions and stuff. He was the Nat Geo producer, and along with the amazing Birgit Buhleier, headed the documentary project."
"Monkey Mia in Shark Bay, Western Australia is a very remote beach resort famous for the wild dolphin population which comes in close to the beach most days. The greater Shark Bay area is home to a huge & diverse range of marine life - including a shitload of sharks of course."
"There is a resident group of international scientists who come from all over the world to study there (dolphins, sharks, turtles). One of the PhD candidates was studying Tiger Sharks (Mike Heithaus) and Nat Geo teamed up with him to film his research as part of the documentary storyline - including putting Crittercams on the dorsal fins of the sharks to see what they did in their natural habitat."
"The sharks would be temporarily caught on static lines, then measured, blood samples taken etc - and then the Cam would be temporarily attached to the fin."
"A lot of our filming work was to be underwater during the catch and release stage - Ian Kellett (the Head Cinematographer and great friend from then on) & myself, one of us filming, the other on Boop Snoot duties with 'The Defender Pole' as the shark swam away."
"The Crittercam would automatically release after some hours, we would retrieve the device and they would study the footage. It was fascinating."
- seavisionburma
GiphyGranny Stripper
"I once asked a guy what he did for work and he told me he 'drove a granny stripper'."
"I assumed this was slang for some road building or agricultural machinery, but nope... He was the driver for a 70 year old stripper."
"I think it was sort of a 'gag gift' situation, for example where she might be hired by the best man at a bucks night to gross out the groom. I can only assume she was ok with that."
- AnchovyMargherita
"I once had a job as a Stripper working for a printer. The job had nothing to do with removing my clothes."
"What that meant was that I took a brush and painted some stuff on tiny holes that would appear in the film they were using to develop the printing plates."
"The printer specialized in making those paper menus and similar things. ONE of our clients was "Busty Rusty" (or was it "Rusty Busty"? I forget...) an actual stripper that wanted some flyers put out on the tables at the strip club she worked for."
- RetiredEpi
GiphyOn-Call... Kinda
"I made $30k a year to be this guy's on call driver when he came to LA."
"He only came like twice a year for a day or two at a time and I got to drive his Bentley when he was in town."
"I wasn't an official Bentley chauffeur, though they do exist."
"I got my ARCA racing safety credentials at 16 and my NASCAR credentials at 18. Class A at 21 with every added credential possible and then I gave one of my buddies rich friends a ride home one night."
"We talked on the drive from Hollywood to Santa Barbara to his house and the next day I got a call from someone richer than him thanking me for getting his friend home safely and offering me the job."
- Toof-Less
GiphyFree Samples
"I once got paid to give out free samples of coffee at a gas station."
"I got there at 5am to be given this huge backpack with a giant container of coffee in it, and it had an air compressed nozzle that I would use to spray coffee into sample size cups."
"I was told to approach anyone pumping gas and give them one."
"It was a disaster. The air pressure was too much so the coffee would blast out every time and get all over my clothes. I kept burning myself as a result."
"It was a heatwave so no one really wanted them anyways and people laughed in my face."
"Multiple people also told me I should have gone to college, which I was in. This was just part of a summer job before my senior year."
"It was humiliating and I never went back."
- earthshifts
GiphyJapanese Cabaret Girls
"I used to live down the road from a cabaret club in Japan - like a place where you paid to drink with girls and talk to them, basically. Not overtly sexual but if the cabaret girl was willing it could be."
"I used to stay up late back then so often bumped into them coming back from work around 2-3am. Some of them were basically my neighbors and I offered some supper once."
"They rarely ate properly if at all and drank too much at work so they took to the supper with the type of gusto you only get when you're drunk-peckish."
"I guess they liked my cooking. And I was a decent listener I suppose, so they hung around more and more and got guilty about eating too much of my food."
"That turned into me getting this weird gig where I got paid to essentially make food for 5-6 cabaret girls per night and let them drink bottled tea and bitch about their clients till they sobered up."
"Sometimes they puked or had to crash at mine because they were too wasted; if that happened they often paid me a bit more out of embarrassment despite me insisting they didn't have to."
"Some of them made BANK. 10k to 15k USD per month on average. I was paid like 40 per head so could make 200 per night in cash usually. Did that 2-3 days a week while I was living in Japan. Weird but really not all that bad and supplemented my living costs nicely."
"At the end of the day, they just wanted someone to talk to after a long day and homemade food to come back to."
- threechance
GiphyThe Intern
"Internship at a sex shop…. Don’t ask me how but my school managed to find a spot in the financial sector at a sex shop."
"I kid you not, the lady was the only person working there and she had 4 interns managing the whole business whilst she was maybe a few hours each week at the shop."
"At one point she even said f*ck it, you guys are managing the shop as well."
"We had no idea wtf we were supposed to do."
"One time a customer came in and asked us if we could sell some weed. We said we don’t sell that here, he went away and we called our boss explaining what happened. She yelled at us through the phone for not selling him drugs because apparently she sold drugs."
"Note that drugs are allowed in our country but only to be sold at verified stores."
"After that (this was like 1.5/2months into the intern ship and we were supposed to be there for 9 months) we were all like hell no, we ain’t getting paid so we won’t deal with this shit."
"She was unstable as f*ck shouting at us if we did something wrong if she was at the office/shop. We left a note on the door that the shop was closed, locked the door, informed our school and left the fuck out of there."
- Nutella_Cooki
GiphyInventing Stories
"I spent the summer working a night shift as a writer/editor on the tv series Big Brother. Very strange. I felt like Ed Harris in the Truman Show."
"But the best thing was, we were all at desks on the big sound stage at Elstree Studios, where films like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were made. Under my desk in yellow chalk, it said GOTHAM CITY WEST as they’d just finished filming a Batman film there."
"My job was to follow everything as it happened via a huge bank of loads of monitors. Then write up 'stories' that would go on the site and then be picked up by national tabloids and other websites."
"The problem was, if two housemates had an argument at 2.15am and I wrote about it and uploaded it, then other media would pick up on it pretty much instantly and then the Big Brother TV programme the next evening would have to cover that and show footage."
"So I was essentially the first line of deciding what got on the show the following day. And I would see everything totally live and unedited. Including at one point a drunk woman sticking a wine bottle up herself."
"But there was a lot of narrative shaping as well. You could make someone look funny by only covering the funny things they said/did. Or make someone look clumsy by only showing the times they were clumsy. Or stupid, etc."
"If they filmed you or I for 24hours then it would be easy to pick out the things we did at certain times and create a narrative about us."
- fletchindubai
GiphyStand-In
"I was a stand-in boyfriend for girls to take home during festival periods. Just so the girl don’t have to deal with the parents / grandparents grilling them for being single / leftover woman."
"Was a fun gig, I got free food, meet some nice and interesting people."
"I stopped now that I’m married, but my wife still wants to pimp me out for that extra $ LOL"
"This is actually very common where I'm currently based (Hong Kong). I hear same stories in China also."
"There are markets for male and female where I have heard people do trades where people go to each other families and after the dinners they go back to their normal life."
"But sometimes people pick people who are more presentable or even speak another language, I don't know why but I assumed it's for a exit strategy to tell parents we broke up afterwards?"
- Icewing
GiphyBeing A Table
"Human buffet table."
"I went to a sex convention to visit some friends who were working and ended up getting tossed a spare vendor badge. Spent the whole weekend hanging out in the Dungeon, chatting with slaves and their Masters and watching the live stage shows."
"Went for a smoke and ended up chatting with a lady who ran a pole dancing studio (they were doing fully clothed pole dancing demos on the stage all weekend) and we were just chatting when her phone rings and it's her employee bailing on a private event in like 2 days."
"She starts complaining about it, and I guess she was hired to MC a new year's event for a BDSM group at a strip club. Her staff was entirely former pro strippers so she had hired a couple of them to be human buffet tables, but everyone bailed. I jokingly said "fuck, that would be cool!" and she offered me the job."
"I got free tickets ($75/each) for me and my boyfriend at the time to the party and had a blast. Then at 11:00, I went in a back room, stripped to just my thong and was wrapped head to toe in saran wrap."
"I laid on a table, they layered all the food on me and then I got carried out on the table like a fucking queen by 4 big bouncers."
"I was told to have fun with it, so I would talk to people a bit as they grabbed the food. A lot of them had no idea it was a real person and thought it was a blow up doll or something until I would say hi."
"I scared a lot of people. Lmfao"
"At 11:45 I got ushered to the strippers change room, removed the saran wrap, had a quick shower, got redressed and went to keep partying."
"I made $750 and met so many awesome people."
- purple-paper-punch
GiphyYou've read what Reddit has done for weird work, but what about you?
We know our readers aren't all working 9-5 jobs.
It's your time to shine, you wonderful weirdos, so tell us what you do!
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